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Barry Bonds* (Steroids)

The only argument Bonds may have is that the Grand Jury Testimony was obtained illegally, but then one has to ask who leaked it in the first place. If the testimony is truthful Bonds might be opening up a pandora box and then might have to explain himself under oath.
 
iphil said:
If bonds' lawyer is asking a judge to have profits surrendered on the book; IF bonds hasn't done anything wrong :confused: :confused: ..

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This book is protected under freedom of speech ..
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Slander (or is it libel? whichever one applies to printed materials) is not covered under the first amendment. However, being guilty of slander/libel requires knowing the truth, and printing/speaking information you know to be false.
 
Counterfit said:
Slander (or is it libel? whichever one applies to printed materials) is not covered under the first amendment. However, being guilty of slander/libel requires knowing the truth, and printing/speaking information you know to be false.
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I believe it also requires that the guilty party be intending to injure the person by spreading the falsehood. Libel is very difficult to prove in U.S. courts because you need concrete evidence (not hearsay or circumstantial) proving that they were out to get you. A guilty party almost has to provide a smoking gun in advance.

This is the reason that Tom Cruise supposedly went after South Park in the UK but not here. Under British law, it's easier to prove libel. This is especially funny because in that South Park episode, the Tom Cruise character utters the phrase, "I'll sue you in England!"
 
iphil said:
If bonds' lawyer is asking a judge to have profits surrendered on the book; IF bonds hasn't done anything wrong :confused: :confused: ..

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This book is protected under freedom of speech ..

The only reason i could figure out why bonds' lawyer is doing this because bonds' did something illegal and he's trying to cover his tracks :eek: :eek:
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My first reaction is similar in terms of the First Amendment protections, but, as I've said many times before, Bonds has many valid reasons to be upset about the grand jury leaks. One doesn't have to be trying to cover illegal activities in order to want to do something about them. Whether or not this lawsuit is the way to go about it, this isn't the way the system is supposed to work.
 
Sayhey said:
Come October when the Giants are playing on and the boys in blue are crying in their beer we win. :p
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I'm sure the memories of all those World Series victory parades will sustain you down the stretch. :cool:
 
aloofman said:
I'm sure the memories of all those World Series victory parades will sustain you down the stretch. :cool:
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Yeah, well, ... well ... eh, ... your momma.:eek: :mad: :eek: :D

<whimper> I just want one in my lifetime. </whimper>
 
As much as I'd like to see those who use the grand jury system as a tool for their personal vendettas held accountable, I think the judge is right. The authors of the book and their publishers aren't the ones who committed the crimes of leaking grand jury testimony and shouldn't be penalized for publishing it. The problem is the only ones who could go after the feds are the feds themselves.
 
IJ Reilly said:
How's your health? :D
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Getting worse every season. The end of the 2002 season almost did me in. But, hey, the Dodgers performance since '88 can't be helping your health either.

iphil, I agree, but who is going to charge them when the leakers are almost certainly the people in charge of the grand jury system themselves. Bonds' lawyers tried an inventive, but doomed, way to get around the First Amendment protections and get after the criminals. I'm glad the judge dismissed the case, but sorry the creeps doing this weren't exposed.
 
Sayhey said:
Getting worse every season. The end of the 2002 season almost did me in. But, hey, the Dodgers performance since '88 can't be helping your health either.
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Oh, so that's what happened. :(

Well, at least it happened during my lifetime. And hope springs eternal, as they say. (We need to find out who "they" are, and deal with them appropriately.)
 
It looks like I jumped the gun. The judge didn't dismiss the case. Judge James Warren only refused the request to appoint a monitor and receiver of the funds generated by the book, Game of Shadows. The rest of the suit goes on.

(03-24) 15:29 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- A judge refused a request by Barry Bonds' lawyers today to freeze the profits of a new book alleging that the Giants slugger used steroids.

Bonds' lawyers argued that the book, "Game of Shadows," written by two Chronicle reporters, was based on illegally obtained grand jury transcripts. Because grand jury proceedings are confidential, they contended, possession of the transcripts is illegal, and any resulting profits should be turned over to the federal government.

The authors should not be allowed to "take money earned from a criminal enterprise,'' attorney Allison Berry Wilkinson said during a 50-minute hearing in San Francisco Superior Court. "They can speak as much as they like on this topic. They just can't make a profit.''

Judge James Warren said the suit raises "serious First Amendment issues,'' and he questioned the assertion by Bonds' lawyers that they weren't trying to stop publication of the book. But Warren said the only issue that needed to be decided today was Bonds' request to appoint a receiver immediately to monitor sales of the book and take custody of all profits. The judge said he saw no legal justification for any such action.
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SFGate.com(a party in the lawsuit) emphasis added
 
i really cant say who cares, because my kid look up to him, and if so it will give my kid the impression it's okay to take steroid. i dont want that to happend :(
 
ethen said:
i really cant say who cares, because my kid look up to him, and if so it will give my kid the impression it's okay to take steroid. i dont want that to happend :(
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ethen, it sounds like you should talk to your kid about drugs and "hero-worship." At some point you might find it worthy to care about other's legal rights as well, but that is another story.
 
Here is another log on the fire. This column expresses much of what I've been trying to say.

Burying Barry: Bonds and The Chain of Command
By Dave Zirin

"If he did it, hang him!" This is what ESPN radio host John Seibel (filling in on the Dan Patrick show) said about Barry Bonds. Is Seibel oblivious that some may take offense to the image of a controversial Black athlete being lynched, or is this just red meat thrown to the worst impulses of his audience? It would be one thing if Seibel was the exception, but the media is in an orgiastic frenzy, lustily tearing Bonds apart and eating him alive. Sports Illustrated this week released excerpts of a new book Game of Shadows, which maps out in painstaking detail the copious steroids that Bonds has allegedly consumed. Prominent columnists are calling for his head on a spit. This is painfully predictable payback executed by a media that Bonds has skewered throughout his career. Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, for example, said that he would like to talk to Bonds but "He would probably just tell me to cure cancer or something."

I have always made my feelings clear on this issue and they are unchanged: Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth. He is the only player in history to have 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. He averaged a 30/30 (30 home runs and 30 stolen bases) for the entire decade of the 1990s, and he is the only player I've ever seen who can change the game with every swing. I also am partial to Bonds because I actually LIKE when he tells someone to "go cure cancer." I like that he asked congress why they were talking about steroids when people still don't have heat or clean water in New Orleans. Is it self-serving? Sure, but no more self-serving than the writers who sell papers by assessing the size of his body parts like he's some sort of beast. As for whether or not he took steroids, I still believe in something that may seem quaint in Bush's America called the presumption of innocence. But if it is actually proven that he took steroids, then I think its not Bonds that should be on trial - in the court of public opinion or elsewhere - but Major League Baseball.

Bonds is currently getting the Gen. Janis Karpinski treatment from the baseball war room. They want to stop the chain of command and make him the symbol of the baseball's "juiced era" in the 1990s. Then, after Bonds is offered up as sacrifice, the game can move on. Sounds great, but its about as morally just as Rumsfeld still pulling a paycheck. Baseball doesn't want the scrutiny of why they did nothing as players began to resemble Lou Ferrigno. They don't want people to look at why steroids were pointedly not even a banned substance until 2003. They don't want people looking at the Nike "chicks did the long ball" ad campaigns, or how they used the Mark McGwire/ Sammy Sosa home run race to bring back fans after the 1994 lockout cancelled the World Series. They don't want anyone to recall the X-men style cartoons they produced of freakishly muscled players to hype the game. They want this to stop with Barry Bonds.

Bonds is a perfect offering to sate the media and anti-Barry fans: he is reviled by the press, he is on the cusp of breaking baseball's most hallowed home run records, and he is the most polarizing athlete of his generation. But there is an unforeseen problem with this approach: part of polarization is that people also rally to your defense. This process is already beginning. Roger Clemens has called the latest allegations part of a "witch hunt". Hall of Fame Brooklyn Dodger Duke Snider said, "I think enough has already been said about this. Do you think it is any easier to hit a ball if you use the stuff?"

But perhaps the most stirring defense has come from Giant Hall of Famer Willie McCovey who said,

"He has never been tested positive. We're supposed to live in a world where you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and he hasn't been proven guilty of anything."

McCovey also raised the idea that people who call for "hanging Bonds" summarily dismiss: that racism is an unspoken part of this discussion.

"Knowing what I have gone through in sports, there are always those little, you know, racial overtones," said McCovey, who started his career in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s.

McCovey also pointed out the hypocrisy of how Mark McGwire, even after his sad congressional testimony, was viewed as a tragic figure, not an evil one like Bonds.
"I don't think it would be this big a deal if McGwire was still playing and was in the same shoes chasing that record," he said. "I don't think they would be spending all this time to dig all this dirt up on him. [Racism] is a thing that we have to live with that people don't even realize."

Even if the 1990s will go down in history as a time when better hitting was achieved through chemistry, that doesn't excuse the current media attack. They are playing to people's worst instincts and ideas. They are also being historically dishonest as they wax rhapsodic about baseball's gauzy past. Anyone who thinks that Mickey Mantle had a big glass of milk before every at bat is kidding themselves. The 1980s was the era of cocaine. The 1960s was when "greenies" or amphetamines were passed around the clubhouse like M&Ms. The era before 1947 was a time when a significant part of the population was segregated out of the game.

Barry Bonds is not the villain in this particular drama. It's Major League Baseball that needs to be held to account. If the media won't do it, then fans are going to have to. If Barry Bonds comes to your city, stand and cheer for the greatest player in the game. Then gaze skyward and boo the owners. As guardians of the game, they have failed miserably. Don't let Barry Bonds be their patsy.
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Edge of Sports
 
iphil said:
Linky
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You beat me to it, iphil. I was just going to post the same story. If the investigation is, as it sounds, not directed at just Barry, then I'm all for it. Especially if former Majority Leader Mitchell can go into how the owners tacitly went along with the use of steroids. Now, that would be worthwhile.
 
Sayhey said:
You beat me to it, iphil. I was just going to post the same story. If the investigation is, as it sounds, not directed at just Barry, then I'm all for it. Especially if former Majority Leader Mitchell can go into how the owners tacitly went along with the use of steroids. Now, that would be worthwhile.
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I know .. I saw it on espnews on tv and looked for the news on mlb site .. :eek: :eek:
 
My dream opening day scenario...

Bond's first appearance of the year. Pitcher notices Bonds is taking the outside of the plate, and becasue of the forearm guard, the inside is protected.
The pitch...
Drilled in the back! "Take your base!" cries the ump.
The pitcher looks dejected and apologizes.
Bonds on first. A pick-off move! BONDS IS DRILLED IN THE KIDNEY!
"Sorry!" says the pitcher. "Hope that didn't hurt!" adds the first baseman.
The set.
Another pickoff move!
The fastball drills Bonds in his ass!
Benches empty.
Game over.
Repeat the next day and until Bonds retires.
 
Les Kern said:
My dream opening day scenario...

Bond's first appearance of the year. Pitcher notices Bonds is taking the outside of the plate, and becasue of the forearm guard, the inside is protected.
The pitch...
Drilled in the back! "Take your base!" cries the ump.
The pitcher looks dejected and apologizes.
Bonds on first. A pick-off move! BONDS IS DRILLED IN THE KIDNEY!
"Sorry!" says the pitcher. "Hope that didn't hurt!" adds the first baseman.
The set.
Another pickoff move!
The fastball drills Bonds in his ass!
Benches empty.
Game over.
Repeat the next day and until Bonds retires.
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Good one Les .. i'm beginning to like that idea .. ;)




Sorry Sayhey :eek: :eek: i know your a Giants' die-hard fan.....:eek:
 
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